How a Famous Robot Test Can Help You Beat Impostor Syndrome

Have you ever had that nightmare where you’re sitting in an examination room in front of a panel of experts, watching a timer count down to zero?

You’re being asked a series of critical, complex questions, and you’re running out of time to answer.

In fact, you haven’t answered one correctly, or at all, and as the examiners prepare to make their final assessment of your work, you realize that you haven’t understood any of their questions.

Your career depends on this test.

They’ll find out. They’ll think you’re a fraud.

As the panel of experts eye you suspiciously, and time runs out, you wake up in a cold sweat, thankful that the examination wasn’t real.

Strangely enough, many of us experience this feeling in our waking lives. It’s something commonly known as “impostor syndrome,” but it’s recently been dubbed the impostor experience by psychologists.

This experience has been recognized in as much as 70 percent of the population and across all demographics. Though not considered a clinical psychological syndrome, it still has a harmful effect on many people.

The experience often leaves individuals feeling isolated, like they can’t talk to anyone about it for fear of being “exposed”

These feelings tend to snowball if not addressed, and they can leave you with a sense of depression, crushing self-doubt, and a feeling of dread at taking on new or challenging tasks.

Everyone from genius-level scientists (Einstein suffered from it late in his career), academy-award-winning actors (Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, and Denzel Washington), and famous authors (Neil Gaiman) have all admitted to feeling this very thing.

But it’s not limited to high-achievers; it’s also been studied in a wide range of groups, including those about to start a new endeavor or career, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, people who have recently had a failure, and even those who have had recent success. Success actually tends to spawn even deeper feelings of the impostor experience in some.

Do any of those groups sound familiar to you?

It seems to me that online content creators and digital entrepreneurs both sit squarely in the cross-hairs for the impostor experience.

What can you do if it’s happening to you?

In 1950, the genius mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing (of Imitation Game fame — think Sherlock but a real person), created what would become known as the Turing Test for testing intelligence in robots and AI for human-like characteristics.

In the original test, if the examiner was unable to distinguish the computer’s answers from a human’s answers to a set of questions, the computer was deemed able to pass as human (or as intelligent as a human — think Ex Machina without the murders).

So, what if the test was used to compare human intelligence?

Little did Turing know, more than 60 years later, social scientists would use his test on a wide variety of fields to learn whether or not human subjects could use “… their ability to pass as members of groups to which they do not belong.”

A famous example of this test was documented in Nature (International Journal of Science) when sociologist Harry Collins passed himself off as a gravitational physicist by answering a set of questions judged by nine expert researchers in the field.

In “What Happens When We Turn the World’s Most Famous Robot Test on Ourselves?” for The Atlantic, Evan Selinger wrote that what Collins proved was that his “interactional expertise” — from having spent many years studying the physicists themselves — gave him the ability to speak on the subject as intelligently as the experts who had many combined years of formal education and field experience.

“Asked to spot the real physicist, seven were unsure and two chose Collins … Nature sent the questions and answers to Sheila Rowan, a gravitational-wave physicist at the University of Glasgow. She was likewise unable to spot the impostor.”

The humble sociologist became an expert on quantum physics simply by socializing and talking with the experts over the years, and thereby he passed as an authority on the subject by proxy.

How to beat your own moments of self-doubt and the impostor experience

Become a lifelong student, no matter what level of mastery you’ve achieved in your education or career, and teach others what you learn.

There are a handful of things we can do to vanquish self-doubt and further ourselves along the path toward interactional expertise and becoming an authority in our chosen niche.

In other words, you don’t have to have a PhD in order to sound smart. All you need is the desire to keep learning from those who may know more than you and the passion to teach others who may know less.

Fear not, you’ll get there.

Please drop me a comment. I’d be fascinated to know if you’ve ever suffered from “impostor syndrome” yourself and any solutions you’ve found to overcome the experience. Cheers.

Kelton Reid

Kelton Reid is Vice President of Multimedia Production for Copyblogger, writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Find out how great writers keep the cursor moving on his podcast The Writer Files, and find Kelton on Twitter.

Reader Comments (22)

I taught at several universities in China for four years. I felt like an impostor every time I taught a Speaking Class. I used my wife’s lesson plans, and she coached me up well, and I could do well with a motivated class, but I still felt like a fake.

After about a year, my boss found out I was a published author and turned me into an Advanced English Writing teacher. Not once did I feel like an impostor with that subject, even though I was constantly improving my lesson plans. The best curriculum I ever devised is the one I never got the chance to use.

So like Sonia noted, learners do make the best teachers. Especially if they’re not drowning and flailing without a clue. This is also why I’ve found it much easier to blog about topics I haven’t completely mastered. We learn together.

Some days I think that “Imposter Syndrome” is my middle name. . . Instead of asking who’s experienced it, maybe you should ask who HASN’T. . . Because I wouldn’t want to work with someone who claims never to have felt those doubts and insecurities. They wouldn’t be very human. . .

I can say that I’ve suffered from this “Imposter Syndrome” you talk about here.

Sometimes I take it as a sign that I need to keep learning, growing, and evolving. There are many new things and new information to learn all the time. It’s shocking how infinite information can seem. 🙂

I’ve heard a self-development “guru” one time say …. “if you are not growing, you are dying” .. and I think that is true. When you are not learning and looking to grow, your life seems to become stagnated and super habitual (a 9 to 5 for 10+ years).

All I do is teach all day long Kelton. Guest posts, Live broadcasts and I even share my experiences through blog comments. If you teach regularly, and keep learning, you will never feel like a fraud because the fraud feeling is simply a fear based on not being enough, and when you are being more than enough by learning and teaching, learning and teaching, you will feel clear, confident and whole. Even if someone comes along and calls you a fraud or imposter, you will realize that their criticism is a projection of self, and instead of fearing these pained folks, you will feel compassion for them. Or maybe they may annoy you, then the compassion LOL. Loving this post!

Thanks for such an in-depth post on impostor syndrome Kelton. I wrote all your steps in my book, but I referred them to my own topic so I could really feel what you were talking about. This is awesome!

I’ve only recently started as a freelance copywriter and ‘Impostor’ is basically my default feeling. But I definitely agree that constantly trying to learn more is helping. Everyone has to start somewhere

Imposter syndrome deeply derailed my career search for a long time. I have always wanted to be a writer, editor, and storyteller, but I denied this passion in college. Instead of building up experience with writing internships, publications, etc, I focused on exploring my other passions in traveling and wildlife conservation. I have built up professional experiences in conservation research (as I always knew someone who knew someone, and the opportunities just rolled in.) However, I recently realized this was ultimately not the career I wanted to have. I began applying for writing and editing jobs this year, but always felt like an imposter as there was no “real” professional experience or publication credits on my resume. Even with my English degree, the countless hours I have spent writing and learning about the craft of storytelling on my own (because I love it!), the number of books I have read that have taught me how to be a better reader and writer, and the number of times in my research jobs I honed in my writing, editing, and communication skills – I was still afraid to say “yes I am a writer!” on my resume. Obviously I was not getting the jobs I desired. I felt doomed to being stuck in a career path I didn’t want because I falsely thought I lacked any experience.

I decided to go to a career counselor in my funk. Even in telling her what I wanted to do, I could feel the anxiety creeping in. But she was supportive and helped me craft a resume that finally told my story and displayed my talents in writing. The headline on my resume now reads “Writer, Researcher, Editor”, and I could not be happier. Now that I have a document declaring myself in this way, I am in complete action mode towards my goals, and I feel the effects of this syndrome less and less everyday.

I feel like an imposter all the time – glad to know I’m not alone! But part of that feeling is because I’m always learning, and the learning catapults me into new experiences and new opportunities. I still struggle, but learning to saw, “Hey, I’m new at this, too. Let’s do this together!”

I tend to swing between suffering really badly to going “well if I can do it, it must be easy, so it’s not even worth worrying about”. It’s a funny place to be, that rocky barren desert between the two! When pushed, I’d rather demonstrate self-deprecation in public, but I’ve got some other high-achieving friends who also suffer from imposter syndrome that I talk to when I’m feeling bad with it. Never underestimate the power of peers.

I agree that talking it out with you peers is a great way to be reminded that we all suffer from self-doubt at times, and that it’s totally normal, especially among the more successful. A little humility goes a long way. Thank for sharing this 🙂

Such a great article. I love the reframe from imposter syndrome to imposter experience. It recognizes that it’s not a disease we carry with us, but rather a temporary experience based on current circumstance. The way I view it, if I’m stretching the boundaries of my current 100% confidence zone, imposter experience naturally is in the mix.

This is something that so many experience yet we are often afraid to discuss it, which only contributes to the feeling of isolation.

One thing that helps me is the process of Name it, Normalize it, Neutralize it.

I try to call it out where I can, even in the moment. A few years ago I offered to help a mentor with his book launch and he accepted my offer. He had published two previous books, and is an in-demand speaker. My inner critic was off and running with “Why does he need your help?”

When we got on a call to discuss ideas, the first thing I said was “I want to let you know I am having an imposter syndrome episode around this. That got him to open up and share one of his imposter experience moments.

It really helps to bring these things out of the shadows. Thanks for this.